


Two Little Indians

by thedevilchicken



Category: And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (play)
Genre: F/M, Murder Mystery, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 09:31:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6748411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never really left the island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Little Indians

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



They were married within the month. 

They went up to Gretna to do it, though as they were both very much of age it was hardly the thing. Still, they neither of them had much to their name in the way of living relations, at least none who'd take offence at their elopement. And the scheme, Lombard had to admit, had a touch romance to it that appealed quite thoroughly to his sense of mischievous whimsy. 

Vera smiled at him over dinner when he suggested the idea. In the morning, they hopped into his car and headed north with the late summer breeze caught up in their hair. 

It rained on their wedding day. It was a cloudburst that began with a thunderclap as loud as a gunshot as they made their way hand-in-hand to the room they'd taken in the inn across the green. Vera started at the sound and then laughed in bright delight as the heavens opened up above them. They ran, Vera's skirt hitched up above her knees; they reached their room soaked down to the skin and quite breathless along with it. By that point they were man and wife, rings on fingers, vows all said. He's never looked back.

He remembers how she looked at him once the door was closed behind them. He remembers how pleasantly pink her cheeks were after the running, how her hair had come down about her shoulders, how the rainwater shone on her goose-pimpled skin in the rainbow of light through the window. Her light summer dress clung tight and close to translucent at the curves of her hips and her thighs and her breasts. She was shivering. She was beautiful.

He remembers how he undressed her with hands trembling from the chill of the rain or perhaps just from urgency. He remembers how she watched him, how her eyes were on him as his fingertips dipped down between her thighs to touch her. He made love to her standing there, pressed up against the door with his mouth at her throat and her nails at his back, the both of them gasping. It was what she wanted in that moment, after all, and he'd wanted her since the third-class carriage on the 12.40 train out of Paddington. 

And after that, when they went to bed, once they'd towelled dry from the rain and slipped in together beneath the goose-down duvet, there were two little indians looking down at them from the mantelpiece. 

The runaway marriage made an excellent addendum to their story and Vera Lombard, née Claythorne, told it exceptionally well. They sold their little tale for quite the tidy sum to one of the less reputable daily papers when they finally returned to town and Lombard, flush with their newfound fame and accompanying fortune, settled on their hotel couch in his fine new suit and said, "You know, darling, we should buy the island."

She called him morbid and tried to look appalled as she took off her dress. Her subsequent nakedness rather ruined the effect.

"But nobody else will want a thing to do with it," he said, by way of explanation. "I'm sure it's going for a song."

"Oh?" she said. "Can you carry a tune?" But she was smiling as she pulled on his necktie and beckoned him to bed. Besides, she was the one who made enquiries with the bank first thing the following morning so she couldn't have been all that appalled by the notion after all, he thought.

These days, they host parties on the island. 

Indian Island has such a lurid history that fancy society folk just can't keep their cheque books in their pockets once the new season's dates are announced. The two of them put on long weekends of titillating murder mystery and the locals on the mainland call it rum or call it ghoulish but Lombard finds it all hilarious. Besides, he and Vera are the ones who ought to feel it most, that sting of impropriety, being as they are the sole survivors. Of course, propriety or not, Philip Lombard has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It turns out he married quite the little secretary. He wonders what a marvel of a games mistress she must have been if secretarial work was only meant to tide her over for the summer months; he wonders over dinner every now and then as she spells out her next plan over the fish course. She makes all the arrangements herself, types all the invitations, cashes all the cheques. She hires the actors and she sets the stage. And then the guests arrive, bobbing across the sea in Narracott's little rickety motorboat, hiking up the cliffside steps from the beach below. They pour drinks because the climb, they say, is thirsty work for amateurs. They chatter because the start's all nerves, excitement for what might happen next. And then they begin. 

It's great fun, of course, it's a rollicking good time and he likes to think he makes a reasonable actor whatever part it is that Vera's written him this time. They stage a different crime each weekend from the start of June right up till August's done and then they live on the proceeds through the rest of the year. They holiday by the casbah out in Marrakech, take cruises on the Nile and climb the pyramids at Giza, ride the Orient Express in the snow through Budapest and Bucharest to Istanbul, though Vera can't quite keep herself from calling it Constantinople. He supposes it's for the best that she never stood in for geography in her schoolmistress days. It's not her best subject.

And then they return like a pair of summer birds there to Indian Island. They pull off the dust covers and they start again for another season. Vera ties up her hair in a scarf the way she does then they're doing eighty with the top down and they get to work.

"Let's finish the season with a bang," she said, on the beach back in June before this year's first guests' arrival. 

He's all for a bang once in a while, so he said, "Why not?" 

He remembers the way she smiled at him then in her swimming costume, the one that droops artistically when wet till one nipple escapes and she pretends not to notice till he pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, or he bends to tease it with his tongue. She likes to act like she's scandalised afterwards, like she's a proper lady and he's a proper rake, but there's always a smile at her lips to give her away. 

He remembers the way she kissed him with her fingers twined tight in his wet hair. Then she laughed and ran into the surf and shouted back to him, "I'll race you!" 

He followed but she beat him to the little rock where she sunbathes when the tide is low, basking naked like a seal till she's almost as tanned as he is. They sat for a while that afternoon, till their costumes almost dried, then she beat him back to shore again just like she always does, her strokes decisive as a shark's. There are times he wonders how the boy got away and how it is she didn't catch him after; there are times he's not sure if she told him the truth that day the others died or if she's completely off her onion. Was it Hugh or was it her? He doesn't think it really matters, though, because a bit of danger's only ever piqued his interest. 

She didn't tell him what she had in mind for their finale. He tells himself he just forgot to ask because she took off her costume right there on the balcony outside the house and laughed as he chased her inside. They made love on the sofa just by the open French doors and got the cushions all damp with seawater. 

Today it's hot. It's the hottest day of the season yet, he thinks, sweating into his good linen suit by the balcony doors to the beep of a motorboat hooter. It's hot but there's storm clouds out to sea. She couldn't have picked a better day for it. It's the last one this year then they'll be off to Deauville then to Paris, Florence, Naples, Rome. Maybe this time they'll sail down Cape Town and head out on safari; she'd fit right in with all the lionesses. Maybe they'll sail down to Durban and he'll show her off in all his old haunts, with a revolver in his pocket just in case. They've got no secrets, after all; their pasts are an open book. They've got no secrets, or at least he's none from her.

Today it's hot and he woke up bright and early. He swam in the sea though the chill in the water's always brisk then ate breakfast from a plate on his lap there in the living room with Simons, their manservant, hovering discreetly. He's sure the fellow thinks he's some poor slovenly excuse for a good English gentleman and frankly the only error there's the part that calls him _gentleman_. He's a rogue and he knows it. 

And there on the mantelpiece as he ate his boiled egg and dripped yolk off his soldiers onto his knee were ten little china indians. He almost dropped his silver spoon with a clatter when he spied them. He knows what she means by a bang.

Now he's waiting by the door to greet their guests and as they climb the stair he wonders which little figurine belongs to which. He fidgets with his wedding ring and Vera comes to stand beside him. She takes his hand in hers. She smiles. 

"You seem distracted," she says. 

"I half expect to wake up dead with those damned indians on the mantel," he replies. "I could very nearly frizzle up in this weather and then there'd just be one."

"Darling, you've been far warmer places than the coast of Devon and somehow managed not to frizzle up just yet," she says, quite sensible about it, quite straightforward, and she pats his arm. He doesn't feel entirely consoled by this, but their guests are arriving. They look eager to begin.

When they left the island together once the judge was dead, they took the last two little indians away with them. Vera packed them in her luggage; she said the police didn't mind and he's never given a damn if that's a little white lie or not. It never came up in the inquest. Now wherever they go, the indians travel with them and they sit on a shelf or a mantel, on a dressing table or a window sill, watching. Waiting.

"Welcome to Indian Island!" Vera says, all smiles, and she ushers their guests inside, through the wide open doors. They'll have a drink and then they'll dress for dinner and they won't wonder as he does how this plot can work. There's ten of them there, after all; there's ten of them and there's ten little indians and not all of them can be actors she's hired for the part. And he thinks he recognises a face or two amongst them, here and there.

Two little indian boys watch them sleep at night and sometimes, just sometimes, he almost expects to wake and find one's missing. He almost expects he won't wake up again at all.

"They Owens have been detained in London," she says, regretfully, "and won't be down until tomorrow." There are murmurs but they know it's just part of the story and they'll have a grand old time on their famous island while they wait for the Owens who don't actually exist. She must have sent their invitations out all signed with _U. N. Owen_ , like they were before. He wonders if she's playing herself tonight. He wonders who he's supposed to be and she hasn't said a word and so he must be Captain Philip Lombard. It's the part he was born to play.

When the guests are settled, she pours him a drink and she hands it to him and he says, "Here's to you--you're very lovely." 

"I'm going to enjoy myself," she says, and she smiles with a sparkle. And as the guests all chatter, as they start to leave to find their rooms, she looks away out through the doors and out across the sea.

He's not sure they ever really left the island; when she shot at him, he's not sure she didn't mean to miss. But danger's always been his game and so he'll play. His interest's piqued.

Besides, there's a revolver in his pocket. And if he survives the night, they'll leave together.


End file.
